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Brooklyn Today: February 7, 2012

Brooklyn Today: February 7, 2012

Good morning. Today is the 38th day of the year. It is the birth anniversary (1883) of Eubie Blake, a ragtime and early jazz composer and pianist who lived in Brooklyn in his last years. Blake, who is best known for writing the songs “Memories of You” and “I’m Just Wild About Harry,” was also one of the writers and producers of Shuffle Along, one of the first Broadway musical revues written by African-Americans.

In the 1960s, when interest in ragtime revived, Blake, as one of the form’s last surviving artists, enjoyed a renewed popularity. Blake, who lived to the age of 100, is buried in Cypress Hills Cemetery in Brooklyn.

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Today, Gary Flom, president and CEO of Bay Ridge Ford, will be honored at a Chinese New Year celebration to be held at New Spring Garden Restaurant at 912 65th St., Sunset Park. Camp Brooklyn, a children’s charity program founded in 2002 by Borough President Marty Markowitz, is honoring Flom for his support of the organization. ...

Today from 4 to 5:30 p.m., Young Adult Institute (YAI), an organization that helps people with developmental disabilities, will open a new residence with six units at 1681 E. 52nd St., Mill Basin. For the first time in their lives, six Brooklyn adults with developmental disabilities will be moving out of their parents’ houses into a home of their own.

Today’s News

New York City is considering appealing a judge’s decision allowing a fired teacher to return to class. Christine Rubino was fired from P.S. 203 in Brooklyn last June after writing on her Facebook page that her students deserved to drown. A Manhattan Supreme Court judge last week ruled that Rubino should get her job back because she had an unblemished record. The judge wrote that her rant was “an isolated incident of intemperance.”

Four teenagers, including a 13-year-old, are facing charges in connection to a Brooklyn home invasion in which a woman was sexually assaulted. Authorities say the teens entered the unlocked apartment in Brownsville last Monday afternoon, wearing ski masks and carrying a gun. They tied up a man and woman in the home and sexually assaulted the woman. After the sexual attack, police say they stole three laptop computers, cash, jewelry, a cell phone, and credit and debit cards.

According to the Daily News, Dr. Clifford Cohen, a Brooklyn doctor who has been practicing medicine since the 1940s, is back to seeing patients thanks to a groundbreaking heart operation. Cohen, 90, had a heart valve implanted without open heart surgery and went home to Mill Basin five days later. “In a matter of hours, we were walking him around,” said daughter Susan, 59, of Narberth, Pa. Four weeks after the surgery, Cohen returned to work.

According to the New York Post, supporters of NYU’s bid to create an applied-sciences school at 370 Jay St. in Downtown Brooklyn have released a 90-second video promoting the initiative. The video, produced by the DUMBO Business Improvement District and Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, predicts Downtown Brooklyn is on the “CUSP of something big.” CUSP is the acronym for the proposed school — the Center for Urban Sciences and Progress.